Seattle International Film Festival: Best Actor, Best Film (3rd place); European Film Awards: Best European Comedy; Academy Award Nominations: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Make-up. Ten other awards, 19 nominations.

“A Man Called Ove” starts out gruff and unlikable….Then it opens up and becomes something of an epic about ordinary life, touching, funny and engrossing.”—Tom Long, Detroit News

A Man Called Ove quite movingly hits all the required notes with its story of a grouchy guy who turns out to have a heart of gold and a past worth sighing over.

Writer/director Hannes Holm is working from a popular novel by Fredrik Backman.
The expressive Rolf Lassgård (After the Wedding) plays title grumpster, Ove. Old beyond his 59 years, Ove wants people off his lawn. He’s also become an annoying neighbourhood watchdog.

He is clearly an unhappy man. Newly laid off and recently widowed, he’s making typically best-laid plans to take his own life. He wants to be reunited with his late wife Sonja (Ida Engvoll), who is seen in numerous happier-day flashbacks where Filip Berg plays the younger and sweeter Ove.

Suicide attempts become comic through constant interruptions from the neighbours, especially Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), an immigrant from Iran expecting her third child with her clueless hubby Patrick. Parvaneh needs help with her restless kids and she’s also eager to learn how to drive, while clueless at it.

Maybe Ove could assist? And could he also look after a stray cat, the one with beseeching eyes? A Hollywood re-make beckons but in this version of A Man Called Ove, all the tears and smiles are earned.